Everyone knows Warren Buffett is famous for being frugal. This is the billionaire who still lives in the same house he bought in Omaha in 1958 for $31,500 and is perfectly content eating McDonald’s breakfast most mornings. But what’s it like to be on the receiving end of his gift-giving? Turns out, it’s a mix of practical, surprising and downright hilarious.
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Although he’s often labeled “cheap,” even his daughter, Susie Buffett, has come to his defense. In a 2017 interview with Business Insider, she clarified: “My dad gets a bad rap for that. He’s been much more generous than people are aware.” And it’s not just with philanthropy – Buffett has given away billions to causes around the globe – but also with how he treats his loved ones.
For years, Buffett’s go-to Christmas gift for family members was cold, hard cash –$10,000 in crisp $100 bills, to be exact. Mary Buffett, Warren’s former daughter-in-law and an author on investing, reminisced about those times in an interview with ThinkAdvisor:
“He would always give each of us $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills. As soon as we got home, we’d spend it – whooo!”
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But Buffett, being Buffett, noticed a pattern. His family was blowing through the cash too quickly, so he decided to switch things up. One Christmas, instead of cash, he gifted $10,000 worth of shares in a company he’d recently invested in – Coca-Cola. Mary explained that along with the shares came a letter, giving the recipients a choice: “Cash them in or hold onto them.”
Mary took the latter option and it paid off. “I thought, ‘Well, this stock is worth over $10,000.’ So I kept it and it kept going up.” From then on, Buffett’s gift-giving evolved into a mix of stock options carefully chosen from his latest investments, such as Wells Fargo.
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Dresses, Delivered Buffett-Style
In the 1960s, Buffett started another unique holiday tradition: buying dresses for all the women in his family. But this wasn’t a bespoke, high-end shopping experience. True to his practical nature, Buffett would head to Topps, a local dress shop in Omaha, armed with a list of everyone’s sizes.
